THE MIND: Portal Between Two Worlds
The Invisible Everywhere: the story of how modern science shattered my atheism & opened my eyes to the existence of God.
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The Great Transformation
Having read the Bible cover to cover multiple times, this remains one of my all-time favorite verses:
“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
Romans 12:2 (NIV)
Perhaps it’s because I’m an intellectual Christian that I find it fascinating Romans 12:2 singles out the mind as the agent of radical change - as the way we can discern God’s will for our lives. Wow! Not our exercise routine, not our nutrition, not our attitudes, not our personality, not our habits - our mind.
To understand why the Bible places such a huge importance on our mind, we first need to ask some basic questions.
What Exactly Is the Mind?
According to the Bible we are imperfect, mortal representations of our Creator - like an artist’s many self portraits on two-dimensional canvases. Creatures unlike any other on Earth with a body, mind, and spirit.
Our body is strictly physical, and our spirit is, well, strictly spiritual. But our mind is something else entirely. It’s something that defies comprehension; as real yet deeply mysterious as dark energy and dark matter.
The mind is also something that decades of scientific research indicate is immortal. There’s compelling evidence that when we die our mind lives on. It’s called the “Persistence of Consciousness.” I talk about it in my movie, The Invisible Everywhere.
Because of all this and more I’ve come to believe our mind is a bridge - a portal - that straddles the physical and spiritual worlds. That it’s the direct conduit, if you will, between our mortal existence and our immortal Creator.
But wait, Dr. G! I hear many of you objecting. Doesn’t the Bible make it clear our connection to God is through the Holy Spirit?
Yes, my fellow traveler, it does, as Jesus himself explains to the disciples in this verse:
“But the Holy Spirit will come and help you, because the Father will send the Spirit to take my place. The Spirit will teach you everything and will remind you of what I said while I was with you.”
John 14:26 (CEV)
I interpret this verse to mean each of us is born with a standard-issue, God-given spiritual capacity. But when we make Jesus our Lord and Savior, something categorically greater occurs: the Holy Spirit comes to dwell within us - to open our eyes to what God wishes for us. It’s like igniting a giant searchlight in a very dark and dangerous world.
What’s more, this description of the Holy Spirit as our divine Helper and Teacher is entirely consistent with what I’ve said and am about to explain to you about the human mind.
What Exactly Does the Mind Contain?
After centuries of study and speculation, science is still utterly baffled by the human mind. At the very least we can say the mind houses what we call human reasoning, our human intelligence.
To most people this automatically means logical intelligence, or IQ. But as I explain in my bestselling book Believing Is Seeing and other writings, many animals have IQ. What makes us unique is we have spiritual intelligence, or SQ.
Where exactly is our spiritual intelligence housed? I believe it’s located in our deeply mysterious, immortal mind, alongside our logical intelligence.
It’s what Romans 12:2 is telling us. It’s explaining that our mind - with one abutment in the physical world and the other in the spiritual world - is a supernatural bridge God designed into our architecture and uses to bring us closer to him, uses to lead us to our divine destiny.
“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
Romans 12:2 (NIV)
Conclusion
Stitching together everything being said here leads us to conclude that, contrary to popular perception, the mind is not merely the instrument of our logical intelligence. It’s also where we apprehend spiritual truth - and where the Holy Spirit teaches, corrects, and transforms our thinking.
That’s why I say our mind is a bridge, a portal, between the physical world and the spiritual world. Between an ugly, selfish, willful existence and a life guided by God’s good, pleasing, and perfect will.
It’s why Romans 12:2 identifies the renewing of our mind as the agent of radical change: the means by which our day-to-day thinking can be transformed from the enemy’s logical-material-profane worldview to our Creator’s translogical-immaterial-sacred one.
Love,
An “intellectual Christian.” Isn’t that an oxymoron? Tell me more…..